Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what (1) clinical, or (2) other, advice, including that from abortion providers, they received prior to their decision not to release the abortion statistics comparing data from the Department’s Abortion Notification System and the Hospital Episode Statistics on an annual basis; and what was the evidential rationale for that decision.

The 2023 Abortion Statistics for England and Wales will not be published concurrently with 2022 statistics due to the need to collect, analyse and quality assure 2023 data. Work on this analysis will begin after publication of the 2022 statistics.

Publication of the 2022 statistics has been delayed due to a number of significant reasons, including issues associated with moving to a new data processing system, ongoing technical issues with the aspects of the system, and a significant increase in the number of paper HSA4 forms being submitted. Other factors that have delayed publication of the full 2022 statistics include an increased workload following the introduction of longer paper and electronic forms to collect additional information about medical abortion following the amendment of the Abortion Act in 2022 to permit home use of early medical abortion pills up to 10 weeks gestation.

As an interim step, the Department published abortion statistics covering the first six months of 2022 in June 2023.

The report comparing abortion complications data from the Department’s Abortion Notification System and the Hospital Episode Statistics was an experimental one-time publication. It was not the intention that this would become an annual publication. No clinical or other advice was sought prior to this decision. However, the Department is inviting views on abortion statistics for England and Wales via an online user engagement survey as well as via email. We welcome responses on all aspects of abortion statistics, including future of publication of abortion complications data.